So I'm currently a full stack javascript developer. I'd like to learn a new/modern language (Go, Clojure, etc) and also tinker with some game development in the process. What language with that criteria has the best libraries or would lend itself best to game dev?
C/C++ (or possibly C# if you count Unity) is still the only choice for "real" game dev.<p>But Haxe (<a href="http://haxe.org/" rel="nofollow">http://haxe.org/</a>) has some great momentum these days, and with a bit of cleverness can target native and web at the same time. Checkout out <a href="http://snowkit.org/" rel="nofollow">http://snowkit.org/</a> and <a href="http://haxor.xyz/" rel="nofollow">http://haxor.xyz/</a> for some examples.<p>It might also line up nicely with your javascript background.<p>Dart + StageXL (<a href="http://www.stagexl.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.stagexl.org/</a>) also looks like an appealing choice, especially if you're coming from the JS world. It lacks an easy way to build a native target, though.<p>But pretty much any language out there has bindings for input, graphics and sound, so if you're more interested in just learning a new language, use whatever you want.
If your primary goal is to learn a modern language, and you're ok with it being maybe a bit too modern and not quite polished yet, Rust is a very interesting choice.<p>It seems like it could fit well with the needs of game developers since it offers fast and predictable performance, compared to anything with a garbage collector, but it also offers compiler infrastructure to make it a lot harder to shoot yourself in the foot, though it does feel restrictive to start.<p>Piston is a game engine that folks have written in rust that you might be interested in playing with: <a href="http://www.piston.rs/" rel="nofollow">http://www.piston.rs/</a>
Since others have indicated C/C++, you should check out handmadehero.org - it will give you a taste of C/C++ programming for a game. I started watching the beginning youtube videos and haven't been able to keep up because of lack of time. He starts out with basics in C - structs, etc. and by the time I dropped off we were moving something around the screen.
This clojure wrapper for libgdx has been fun to play with <a href="https://github.com/oakes/play-clj" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/oakes/play-clj</a> and a relatively accessible way to write games in a functional way. You can run it on Android and iOS as well.
I'd venture to say "The one you know best". If you find yourself struggling to do something in the language of your choice, see how others are accomplishing it and then decide.
That's kind of a backwards goal (instead of trying to make a game, and moving towards the technology that enables that) but to entertain your question: there isn't one.<p>The game development community doesn't really buy into the crap that the web development world does. People care more about results than process there, and as a result, care far more about performance and ease of development, too. That means using tested technologies.<p>Large game engines are built in C and C++, and their exposed scripting APIs are provided in Lua, C#, and JavaScript.<p>I don't know anyone that writes games other than Flash ones that don't subscribe to the language ecosystems of the ones above or general game development ecosystem that you can take seriously.<p>Game development is a multidisciplinary field, don't test the waters there for playing around with a new language. You're missing so much more when you make that your goal.